Climate Change and Environmental Change: Driving Forces, Vulnerability, Mitigation, and Adaptation

Project Overview

The Institute conducts research on climate change and environmental change.

The Institute's research related to climate change investigates driving forces, vulnerability, mitigation, and adaptation. We study human behaviors that drive climate change and human reactions to climate-related technologies and policies with an eye toward informing best practices for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Our work on climate adaptation and vulnerability has focused on analytic-deliberative methods to assess vulnerability. As part of this work we developed and implemented the Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) process to support municipal climate adaptation planning. Our work on climate adaptation has focused mainly on cities along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

The Institute's research related to environmental change has touched on a variety of policy domains, including the management of coastal ecosystems, marine fisheries and aquaculture, and wildland fire. Our research develops understandings of the driving forces that promote pro-environmental behaviors and that exacerbate social and ecological vulnerabilities to hazards and management responses to them. Our work has also sought to develop methodologies for improving assessments of vulnerability and environmental change, for example, in fisheries management. We have explored the role of models in assessing impacts of nitrogen loading in coastal embayments, with a focus on how models may be transferred from one ecological and social context to another.

Projects

  • ACT: From targets to action - public responses to climate policy instruments

  • Promoting climate change awareness and adaptive planning in Atlantic fisheries communities using participatory vulnerability analysis, mapping, and systems dynamic modeling

  • Development and application of the Vulnerability, Consequences, and Adaptation Planning Scenarios (VCAPS) process to support planning by local decision makers concerned about coastal management and climate change vulnerability and adaptation. The VCAPS process is intended to help communities become more resilient to weather and climate change

  • A risk-based approach to rapid vulnerability assessment in New England fishery communities

  • Social and ecological transferability of integrated ecological assessment models

  • Solar energy evolution and diffusion studies

Publications

  • Tuler, S. Dow, K., and Webler, T. Submitted 2020. Assessment of adaptation, policy, and capacity building outcomes from 14 processes, Submitted to Environmental Science and Policy.

  • Stern, P.C. 2020. A reexamination on how behavioral interventions can promote household action to limit climate change, Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-14653-x

  • Nielsen, K. S., Clayton, S., Stern, P. C., Dietz, T., Capstick, S., & Whitmarsh, L. 2020. How Psychology Can Help Limit Climate Change, American Psychologist Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/amp0000624

  • Stern, P.C., and Dietz, T. 2020. A broader social science research agenda on sustainability: Nongovernmental influences on climate footprints, Energy Research & Social Science 60:101401.

  • Stern, P.C., and Wolske, K.S.  2017. Limiting climate change:  What’s most worth doing?, Environmental Research Letters 12:091001 https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aa8467

  • Tuler, S., Webler, T., and Rhoades, J. 2016. Stormwater Management in a Time of Climate Change: Insights from a Series of Scenario-Building Dialogues, Weather, Climate, and Society 8:163–175.

  • Kastner, I., and Stern, P.C.  2015. Examining the decision-making processes behind household energy investments:  A review, Energy Research and Social Science 10:72-89.

  • Carrico, A.R.,Vandenbergh, M.P., Stern, P.C., and Dietz, T. 2015. US climate policy needs behavioural science, Nature Climate Change 5:177-179.

  • Kettle, N. P., Dow, K., Tuler, S., Webler, T., Whitehead, J., & Miller, K. M. 2014. Integrating scientific and local knowledge to inform risk-based management approaches for climate adaptation, Climate Risk Management 4-5:17-31.

  • Tuler, S., Webler, T., and Polsky, C. 2012. A rapid impact and vulnerability assessment approach for commercial fisheries management, Ocean and Coastal Management 71:131-140.

  • Dietz, T.,  Tanguay, J., Tuler, S., and Webler, T.  2004. Making computer models useful: An exploration of expectations by experts and local officials, Journal of Coastal Management 32(3):307-318.